Abstract
Lenin and Dzerzhinskiy were the most promoted “divinities” in Soviet popular culture. The two leaders also had valuable characteristics for propagandising the “friendship of peoples” between the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of Poland: Lenin had lived two years in the Krakow region whereas Polish revolutionary Dzerzhinskiy became a statesman in Soviet Russia. Between the 1960s and 1980s, Soviets and Poles coproduced three movies featuring Lenin and Dzerzhinskiy as transnational heroes: Lenin in Poland, by Sergey Yutkevich and Evgeniy Gabrilovich (1966), No Identification Marks (1979–1980) and Fiasco of Operation “Terror” (1981–1983) by Anatoliy Bobrovskiy and Yulian Semënov. The paper considers the interactions between Soviet and Polish professionals during the preparation, the shooting, and the release of these movies as examples of the “Statesocialist Mode of Production” and of its “micro-politics” (Szczepanik 2013). In the 1960s, Soviets and Poles officially got along well at the ideological level. Yet a muffled antagonism continued about the representation of their nation. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, revolutionary history about Dzezhinsiy was a mere setting for mainstream movies. Once political issues had been driven to the background, the professional advantage of joint movie productions became more obvious. Co-production offered professionals multiple opportunities: to enjoy tourism abroad, go shopping, improve skills by working with foreign colleagues and cutting-edge technologies. Although the involvement of some might have been motivated by personal interests, both countries ended up benefiting from the joint projects.
Highlights
Résumé : Lénine et Dzerjinski étaient les « divinités » les plus célébrées de la culture populaire soviétique
No matter how small this minority was, it showed that Marxism in Poland could not be seen merely as an ideology imported from Russia
Who else could have stated in mid-1917: “If Finland, Poland or Ukraine secede from Russia, there is nothing bad in that” (Krausz 2015, 174)? The case of both revolutionaries could help to prove that the expansion of socialism in Eastern Europe was not the effect of Russian imperialism
Summary
The project of Lenin in Poland was launched in 1958 but the shooting took place only in 1964–1965. The only disturbing fact might be Lenin’s close relationship with provocateur Roman Malinovskiy The latter, a worker and activist, had been the head of the Bolshevik fraction at the State Duma of the Russian Empire and, with other deputies, was received in Poland by Lenin twice, in Cracow in December 1912 and in Poronin in September 1913. He reiterated that the recognition of Poland’s historical right to independence was a crucial principle since Lenin put it forward in opposition to Rosa Luxemburg and the Polish Marxists’ so-called leftist policy on the national question In his statement, Aleksandrov focused on this debate within the socialist movement and comprehensively exposed Lenin’s position. When he enlists in the Legion, he is greeted by his workmates. But his eventual death on the front is presented alongside the death of a young Russian. While the first scene acknowledges the Polish people’s deep patriotism, the second is a reminder of the absurdity of fratricidal war among working people
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